Not a lot of bands come from Boise, Idaho, however even if SEPTIC DEATH were the only band to emerge from there, it should put the city on the map as birthing something great.
The band was formed by late ’70s/ early ’80s California skate regular Brian “Pushead” Schroeder, who had already made a bit of a name in the underground hardcore/ punk scene not only as a skater, but as an artist.  He began sending his art to bands and ‘zines in the early ’80s, and many of them chose to use it.  Later he became the main artist for Zorlac Skateboards, designing the artwork for a special edition METALLICA skateboard .  The band soon used him to design art and t-shirts for them, which propelled him to even larger fame.  At this point he has done art for tons of bands both big and small, and his unmistakable gruesome and original artwork and attention to detail was first brought into full bloom in the service of SEPTIC DEATH.

Now That I Have the Attention What Do I Do With It? (which came out in early ’86) is not actually an album proper, but a re-issue of the band’s first 12″ep Need So Much Attention… Acceptance of Whom mixed with some compilation tracks and some new songs.  Side A features 3 tracks from the 12″ep that have added guitars and re-recorded vocals, as well as songs from compilations such as PEACE/ War, Cleanse the Bacteria, and the Putrid Evil flexi (some re-recorded).  Side B features the other 9 songs from the 12″ep in their original versions.

Back cover of the Need So Much Attention… 12″ep

Pushead still considers it his band’s debut album rather than a compilation, so we at PMT count it as such. The music on this is astoundingly perfect, jaw dropping hardcore thrash. There are few albums that deal in this kind of music that are this phenomenal. The songs are fairly simple, but very original sounding even today (after almost 30 years). The musicianship is as tight as can be, with insanely fast picking from guitarist Onj, talented and original bass lines from bassist Mike Matlock and a stop-on-a-dime delivery that belies a strong intimacy with the songs and their instruments. There is no band that I can think of who play thrash that can top this. Some people say SLAYER’s Reign In Blood is the ultimate thrash album, but this one blows it away. The fast parts are incredibly fast, and the breakdowns are rocking and make you want to kill. The vocals sound like a cross between a hardcore screamer and a gruff black metal vocalist (with just a bit of a snotty punk snarl), and the song structures are interesting and well put together (even the shorter songs like “Advantage” and “Dream Silent” seem carefully crafted). It’s worth mentioning that drummer Paul Birnbaum is insanely talented and his outstanding drum work is a perfect testament to what a thrashcore drummer should sound like- not just fast, but rhythmically interesting.
The lyrics are also written with a high level of quality, mostly concerning madness and horror (with some social ones thrown in).

The production is perfect- clear enough to hear everything well, but grimey enough to not sound too clean or overproduced.  The buzzsaw guitars and fuzzy bass compliment the machine gun drums (that at times sound like he’s pounding on a coffin) perfectly.

The packaging and artwork is top notch, as you’d expect from a detail-oriented perfectionist like Pushead.  However he gets a couple of other artists to do some work on it as well, so the artwork is varied and not one-dimensional.

Many bands, from METALLICA to INTEGRITY have heralded the brilliance of SEPTIC DEATH (James Hetfield even did vocals on their follow-up 7″ep Burial, and Kirk Hammett played mead guitar on a song on their Kichigai 7″ep).  If you like hardcore, thrash, crust, or extreme metal and you haven’t checked this album out, do yourself a favor and listen to it now.

Their drummer and guitarist have switched instruments and now play in a band called Little Miss and the No-Names (who are much more punk rock sounding).

The date this album was released is a bit misleading.  To appreciate the full history and influence this band and recording had on extreme music, you have to go back to their formation in the early to mid ’80s.  They started out under the name GENOCIDE, and released 3 demos under that name (Toxic Metal (1984); Violent Death (1985), and The Stench of Burning Death (1986)).  They put the band on hiatus while a couple of the members joined DEATH for a short period, but that didn’t work out so they reformed as REPULSION (a much better name, both in image and originality (there were at least 2 other bands who had recordings under the name GENOCIDE)).

The GENOCIDE demos got them a lot of attention in the underground metal and hardcore scene, and they became known as one of the fastest and most extreme bands out, as well as one of the first bands to perfectly mix hardcore and metal (which created grindcore, a term coined by the band NAPALM DEATH a little later when they appropriated the sound (they started out as an anarcho-punk band) and made it even more extreme).  As REPULSION they were determined to play even faster and be even more extreme.  They booked some time in a local low budget basement recording studio ran by a burned out hippie who regarded their music with derision, and recorded their 18 song masterpiece (or should it be blasterpiece?) in 4 days.  Most of the songs were GENOCIDE songs that they sped up even more, but they found they were lacking in time (they wanted at least 30 minutes of music on it) so they wrote some longer songs (such as “Black Breath” and “Maggots In Your Coffin”) to fill up the time.  The last song they wrote (“Crematorium”) was barely finished being created when they went into the studio.
The engineer didn’t know anything about this kind of music, so he just pushed all the levels up and isolated them.  They recorded scratch guitar and bass tracks, then went back in and relayed them after they got the drums the way they wanted.  The vocals were done on a cheap PCM mike, which gave them the distorted “yelled through a CB radio” effect.  The scratch bass was ran through a distortion pedal and plugged direct into the recording console, which gave it an insanely fuzzed out and distorted sound.  After they had finished re-recording their instruments for the real session, they discovered that the engineer had accidently  recorded some of the overdubbed guitar solos over the (supposed to be) permanent bass track, and they were out of time and couldn’t re-record it.  So they had to use the fuzzy scratch bass track in the final recording, which made it all the more distorted and intense.  When they finished they had an ugly, distorted mess- it was the closest thing to slightly sculpted chaos ever put on tape up to that point.  There was really nothing that extreme out in the world of hardcore or metal, and they were nonplussed about it.
They wanted to call it Slaughter of the Innocent, and sent it out to most of the labels that were putting out extreme music at the time.  None of the labels showed any interest, as it was far too chaotic and extreme and noisy for most any established label to think it would sell in 1986, so the band begin selling it themselves and circulating it in the underground on cassette.  It sold decently, but they were discouraged that no labels showed any interest in them, and after awhile they drifted apart (a couple of them joined the service) and thought that was that.  REPULSION the band was only together for probably less than 2 years.

Meanwhile, the recording became a staple in the tape trading scene.  It’s intensity and uncompromising brutality made it legendary, and members of bands like NAPALM DEATH, PUNGENT STENCH, ENTOMBED,  and CARCASS (and many more) started spreading the word, talking about them in interviews and making them even more legendary.  Both Shane Embry (NAPALM DEATH) and Jeff Walker (CARCASS) tried to get Dig Pearson of Earache to release it, but he wasn’t totally convinced.  After CARCASS began getting big, Jeff decided to start his own record label Necrosis Records, and Dig agreed to distribute it’s releases on Earache.  After releasing a 12″ep of his old band the ELECTRO HIPPIES to get his feet wet, he wanted to put out REPULSION’s Slaughter of the Innocent album.  They got in touch with the band, and Dig funded a remix of the album.  They refined the sound a tiny bit (taking out some of the feedback and effects on the vocals) and decided the name Horrified fit the album better.  It was released on Necrosis in 1989, 3 years after it was recorded.

The album still stands up today as a perfect example of an extreme mix of metal and hardcore taken to ten.  It starts off with a catchy, moshy slower part, then the mayhem begins.  And that describes it perfectly- mayhem.  Chaos.  All the fun and dangerous things you want in extreme music.  Super fuzzed out bass. Distorted, yelled vocals (that sound like no one else before or since).  Machine-gun drums.  Blazing guitar solos that come out of nowhere and disappear just as fast.  And of course the great EC Comics inspired horror lyrics.  I think the only thing I’d change is to leave the cool feedback in “Radiation Sickness” from the cassette version they sold themselves (they took it out when they remixed the album).
Get in touch with your brutal, primitive side and check this out if you haven’t heard it.  It’s never too late…